Page:Gesta Romanorum - Swan - Wright - 1.djvu/507

Rh no longer required to spread his name and consolidate his power. Though influenced by motives of ambition, they were not those of wealth or rank, but of real, substantial power; and, although some obscure thoughts of framing a religious Order might have obtruded upon his meditations at Manreza, it is probable that the precise nature of it was only gradually unfolded, and not completed until he was about to leave Paris ."

The latter part of the life of Ignatius Loyola, bears no proportion to its outset. Enthusiasm had abated, and policy was the cynosure of his subsequent career. In this he differs from Alexius; as he became more active, he became less a ; and as his mind opened, and reason assumed her proper station, he gradually lost the fanatic in the designing founder of a sect. What he retained of fanaticism was chiefly external, and artificial; but the leading features of his life, accord surprizingly with the legendary character of the text. Had Loyola remained always ignorant, he had been always a bigot; and, judging by the commencement of his life,